Does International Climate Law allow Cameroon to access and to extract new resources of fossil fuels with its immediate developmental needs and existing climate commitments? Navigating The Conflict between National Resource Governance and the Paris Agreement

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🔬研究者:International climate law scholars will find a detailed doctrinal analysis of the permissibility conditions for new fossil fuel extraction in developing countries.

🏢実務担当者:Sustainability professionals involved in international energy projects or climate finance can gain insight into legal constraints and conditions for fossil fuel investments in developing nations.

🏛政策担当者:Climate negotiators and policymakers from both developed and developing countries should note the evolving legal framework for conditional permissibility of fossil fuel extraction and its implications for CBDR-RC.

This project investigates the legal scope of new fossil fuel extraction in Cameroon, under today’s climate law, from the perspective of Cameroon’s developmental requirements, and the country’s obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. The research question highlights if the existing law under international climate law can allow a developing nation to extract resources from fossil fuel, keeping abreast of shifting mitigation commitments and targets for temperature. The research stands at an intersection between a steady sovereignty over natural resources, the right to develop and the emerging obligations of climate due diligence. The thesis conducts a doctrinal legal analysis of the UNFCCC, Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, the relevant elements of customary international environmental law, concluding with the 2025 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on climate change. This international framework assesses Cameroon’s domestic law regime, focusing on the Petroleum Code, energy legislation, environmental law and consecutive Nationally Determined Contributions. The thesis observes that no new fossil fuel extraction by developing countries is prohibited by existing international climate law. However, it demonstrates this exploitation will no longer be permitted without strings attached. As has been recently seen, there are scheme of conditional permissibility that has been created, which now allows the development of a fossil fuel industry on grounds of increased due diligence, prevention of transboundary harm and alignment with national mitigation pathways in the sense that the CBDR RC principle can still be regarded in its regulatory sense to be significant, and it can be demonstrated to be used strategically and to control the limits of climate obligations according to the stage of development or the capacity of an individual country. The thesis asserts that Cameroon still does have a (legally and progressively limited) right to utilise fossil fuel resources if exploitation is aimed at accessing domestic energy resources, integrates into the implementation of a credible transition plan or is financially and technologically transferred and financed by international climate finance. Without a fair international cooperation all-or-nothing provision for the extension of fossil fuels in Cameroon is neither legally prohibited nor normatively viable.

• openalex https://hdl.handle.net/1946/52958first seen 2026-06-02 04:41:13 · last seen 2026-06-10 04:37:37